railway line on the former dye works, supplied daily by Wincanton Transport trucks shipping raw chemical products from the docks at Southampton, Bristol and Sharpness. Closed in the late 1980s, the production site became the Bath Road Trading Estate, while the former dye works and chemical storage area became a new housing estate. In 1770, dyer Richard Hawker built Dudbridge House close to the river and his works. In 2007 the house has been converted into flats, and faces a housing estate which was built in the 1980s on part of the old dyeworks. In 1849, Kimmins Mill was constructed to mill flour. After ceasing milling in 1935, it was used as a storage facility, including textile machinery. Now located next to a Sainsbury's carpark, it is now the Stroud Mills Heritage centre, with a national collection of books and information about the construction industry, and historic information about the Stroud area. Up until 1900, the site where Sainsbury's supermarket now sits was an orchard, with an attached small foundry. Before the First World War, James Apperley founded the Dudbridge Patent Machine Works to manufacture textile machinery, but after his business failed H. G. Holbrow manufactured steam engines, and then J. D. Humpidge manufactured gas engines. In the late 1920s, Hampton cars were assembled there. After their failure, the site reverted to a foundry until the late early 1990s, home to the cupola iron furnaces of Lewis & Holes Ltd. To the top of Dudbridge Hill, and on the junction between Dudbridge and Rodborough on the A46 road to Bath, lies the Daniels industrial estate. In 1840, Thomas Daniels founded an engineering, millwrighting and foundry business which quickly grew. After the death of Lionel Daniels in 1956, the company became Daniels plc (listed on the London Stock Exchange), which was taken over by Unichrome International in 1968. After the site closed in the late 1980s, it was converted to an industrial estate, whose tenants included a Focus DIY store. Hampton Cars The Hampton Engineering Company had been formed in Kings Norton, Birmingham in 1912, but after it went into receivership, in 1919 the company was re-established as a joint venture between William Paddon and Charles Apperley of the Stroud Metal and Plating Company, and production was transferred to Dudbridge. The first post-war car was the Hampton 11.9 with either a 1496 cc or 1795 cc Dorman four-cylinder engine but only